Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though; 
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. 

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower; 
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye; 
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.
But if I though to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,- 
In the confusion of them all aglitter,
And birds that joined in the excited fun
By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,
I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.

It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard
By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.
From the high west she makes a gentle cast
And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,
She has her speel on every single lizard.
I fancied when I looked at six o'clock
The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.
The moon was waiting for her chill effect.
I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock
In every lifelike posture of the swarm,
Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.
Across each other and side by side they lay.
The spell that so could hold them as they were
Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm
To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.
One lizard at the end of every ray.
The thought of my attempting such a stray! 

ONCE on the kind of day called "weather breeder,"
When the heat slowly hazes and the sun
By its own power seems to be undone,
I was half boring through, half climbing through
A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar
And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,
And sorry I ever left the road I knew,
I paused and rested on a sort of hook
That had me by the coat as good as seated,
And since there was no other way to look,
Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,
Stood over me a resurrected tree,
A tree that had been down and raised again—
A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
As if for fear of treading upon me.
I saw the strange position of his hands—
Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
Of wire with something in it from men to men.
"You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays
And what's the news you carry—if you know?
And tell me where you're off for—Montreal?
Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all.
Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
Half looking for the orchid Calypso."

Brown lived at such a lofty farm
That everyone for miles could see
His lantern when he did his chores
In winter after half-past three.

And many must have seen him make
His wild descent from there one night,
'Cross lots, 'cross walls, 'cross everything,
Describing rings of lantern light.

Between the house and barn the gale
Got him by something he had on
And blew him out on the icy crust
That cased the world, and he was gone!

Walls were all buried, trees were few:
He saw no stay unless he stove
A hole in somewhere with his heel.
But though repeatedly he strove

And stamped and said things to himself,
And sometimes something seemed to yield,
He gained no foothold, but pursued
His journey down from field to field.

Sometimes he came with arms outspread
Like wings, revolving in the scene
Upon his longer axis, and
With no small dignity of mien.

Faster or slower as he chanced,
Sitting or standing as he chose,
According as he feared to risk
His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,

He never let the lantern drop.
And some exclaimed who saw afar
The figures he described with it,
"I wonder what those signals are

Brown makes at such an hour of night!
He's celebrating something strange.
I wonder if he's sold his farm,
Or been made Master of the Grange."

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;
He fell and made the lantern rattle
(But saved the light from going out.)
So half-way down he fought the battle

Incredulous of his own bad luck.
And then becoming reconciled
To everything, he gave it up
And came down like a coasting child.

"Well—I—be—" that was all he said,
As standing in the river road,
He looked back up the slippery slope
(Two miles it was) to his abode.

Sometimes as an authority
On motor-cars, I'm asked if I
Should say our stock was petered out,
And this is my sincere reply:

Yankees are what they always were.
Don't think Brown ever gave up hope
Of getting home again because
He couldn't climb that slippery slope;

Or even thought of standing there
Until the January thaw
Should take the polish off the crust.
He bowed with grace to natural law,

And then went round it on his feet,
After the manner of our stock;
Not much concerned for those to whom,
At that particular time o'clock,

It must have looked as if the course
He steered was really straight away
From that which he was headed for—
Not much concerned for them, I say:

No more so than became a man—
And politician at odd seasons.
I've kept Brown standing in the cold
While I invested him with reasons;

But now he snapped his eyes three times;
Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's
'Bout out!" and took the long way home
By road, a matter of several miles.

NOW that they've got it settled whose I be,
I'm going to tell them something they won't like:
They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.
Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting
To make a present of me to each other.
They don't dispose me, either one of them,
To spare them any trouble. Double trouble's
Always the witch's motto anyway.
I'll double theirs for both of them- you watch me.
They'll find they've got the whole thing to do over,
That is, if facts is what they want to go by.
They set a lot (now don't they?) by a record
Of Arthur Amy's having once been up
For Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren.
I could have told them any time this twelvemonth
The Arthur Amy I was married to
Couldn't have been the one they say was up
In Warren at March Meeting for the reason
He wa'n't but fifteen at the time they say.
The Arthur Amy I was married to
voted the only times he ever voted,
Which wasn't many, in the town of Wentworth.
One of the times was when 'twas in the warrant
To see if the town wanted to take over
The tote road to our clearing where we lived.
I'll tell you who'd remember- Heman Lapish.
Their Arthur Amy was the father of mine.
So now they've dragged it through the law courts once
I guess they'd better drag it through again.
Wentworth and Warren's both good towns to live in,
Only I happen to prefer to live
In Wentworth from now on; and when all's said,
Right's right, and the temptation to do right
When I can hurt someone by doing it
Has always been too much for me, it has.
I know of some folks that'd be set up
At having in their town a noted witch:
But most would have to think of the expense
That even I would be. They ought to know
That as a witch I'd often milk a bat
And that'd be enough to last for days.
It'd make my position stronger, I think,
If I was to consent to give some sign
To make it surer that I was a witch?
It wa'n't no sign, I s'pose, when Mallice Huse
Said that I took him out in his old age
And rode all over everything on him
Until I'd had him worn to skin and bones,
And if I'd left him hitched unblanketed
In front of one Town Hall, I'd left him hitched
In front of every one in Grafton County.
Some cried shame on me not to blanket him,
The poor old man. It would have been all right
If some one hadn't said to gnaw the posts
He stood beside and leave his trade mark on them,
So they could recognize them. Not a post
That they could hear tell of was scarified.
They made him keep on gnawing till he whined.
Then that same smarty someone said to look- 
He'd bet Huse was a cribber and had gnawed
The crib he slept in- and as sure's you're born
They found he'd gnawed the four posts of his bed,
All four of them to splinters. What did that prove?
Not that he hadn't gnawed the hitching posts
He said he had besides. Because a horse
Gnaws in the stable ain't no proof to me
He don't gnaw trees and posts and fences too.
But everybody took it for proof.
I was a strapping girl of twenty then.
The smarty someone who spoiled everything
Was Arthur Amy. You know who he was.
That was the way he started courting me.
He never said much after we were married,
But I mistrusted he was none too proud
Of having interfered in the Huse business.
I guess he found he got more out of me
By having me a witch. Or something happened
To turn him round. He got to saying things
To undo what he'd done and make it right,
Like, 'No, she ain't come back from kiting yet.
Last night was one of her nights out. She's kiting.
She thinks when the wind makes a night of it
She might as well herself.' But he liked best
To let on he was plagued to death with me:
If anyone had seen me coming home
Over the ridgepole, 'stride of a broomstick,
As often as he had in the tail of the night,
He guessed they'd know what he had to put up with.
Well, I showed Arthur Amy signs enough
Off from the house as far as we could keep
And from barn smells you can't wash out of ploughed ground
With all the rain and snow of seven years;
And I don't mean just skulls of Roger's Rangers
On Moosilauke, but woman signs to man,
Only bewitched so I would last him longer.
Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall,
I made him gather me wet snow berries
On slippery rocks beside a waterfall.
I made him do it for me in the dark.
And he liked everything I made him do.
I hope if he is where he sees me now
He's so far off he can't see what I've come to.
You _can_ come down from everything to nothing.
All is, if I'd a-known when I was young
And full of it, that this would be the end,
It doesn't seem as if I'd had the courage
To make so free and kick up in folks' faces.
I might have, but it doesn't seem as if.

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

'I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman,
The early Mormons made a settlement
And built a stone baptismal font outdoors-
But Smith, or someone, called them off the mountain
To go West to a worse fight with the desert.
You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font.
Well, take me there.'

Someday I will.'

'Today.'

'Huh, that old bathtub, what is that to see?
Let's talk about it.'

'Let's go see the place.'

'To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do:
I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer,
And both of our united strengths, to do it.'

'You've lost it, then?'

'Not so but I can find it.
No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it.
The mountain may have shifted since I saw it
In eighty-five.'

'As long ago as that?'

'If I remember rightly, it had sprung
A leak and emptied then. And forty years
Can do a good deal to bad masonry.
You won't see any Mormon swimming in it.
But you have said it, and we're off to find it.
Old as I am, I'm going to let myself
Be dragged by you all over everywhere- '
'I thought you were a guide.'

'I am a guide,
And that's why I can't decently refuse you.'

We made a day of it out of the world,
Ascending to descend to reascend.
The old man seriously took his bearings,
And spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced
A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted,
Or stained by vegetation from above,
A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

'Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain,
At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle.'

'I won't accept the substitute. It's empty.'

'So's everything.'

'I want my fountain.'

'I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty.
And anyway this tells me where I am.'

'Hadn't you long suspected where you were?'

'You mean miles from that Mormon settlement?
Look here, you treat your guide with due respect
If you don't want to spend the night outdoors.
I vow we must be near the place from where
The two converging slides, the avalanches,
On Marshall, look like donkey's ears.
We may as well see that and save the day.'

'Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own?'

'For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature?
You don't like nature. All you like is books.
What signify a donkey's cars and bottle,
However natural? Give you your books!
Well then, right here is where I show you books.
Come straight down off this mountain just as fast
As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet.
It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather.'

Be ready, I thought, for almost anything.

We struck a road I didn't recognize,
But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes
In dust once more. We followed this a mile,
Perhaps, to where it ended at a house
I didn't know was there. It was the kind
To bring me to for broad-board paneling.
I never saw so good a house deserted.

'Excuse me if I ask you in a window
That happens to be broken, Davis said.
'The outside doors as yet have held against us.
I want to introduce you to the people
Who used to live here. They were Robinsons.
You must have heard of Clara Robinson,
The poetess who wrote the book of verses
And had it published. It was all about
The posies on her inner windowsill,
And the birds on her outer windowsill,
And how she tended both, or had them tended:
She never tended anything herself.
She was 'shut in' for life. She lived her whole
Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.
I'll show You how she had her sills extended
To entertain the birds and hold the flowers.
Our business first's up attic with her books.'

We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass
Through a house stripped of everything
Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems.
Books, I should say!- if books are what is needed.
A whole edition in a packing case
That, overflowing like a horn of plenty,
Or like the poetess's heart of love,
Had spilled them near the window, toward the light
Where driven rain had wet and swollen them.
Enough to stock a village library-
Unfortunately all of one kind, though.
They bad been brought home from some publisher
And taken thus into the family.
Boys and bad hunters had known what to do
With stone and lead to unprotected glass:
Shatter it inward on the unswept floors.
How had the tender verse escaped their outrage?
By being invisible for what it was,
Or else by some remoteness that defied them
To find out what to do to hurt a poem.
Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book,
To send it sailing out the attic window
Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers,
Tried to improve on sailing like a tile
By flying like a bird (silent in flight,
But all the burden of its body song),
Only to tumble like a stricken bird,
And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved.
Books were not thrown irreverently about.
They simply lay where someone now and then,
Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet
And left it lying where it fell rejected.
Here were all those the poetess's life
Had been too short to sell or give away.

'Take one,' Old Davis bade me graciously.

'Why not take two or three?'

'Take all you want.'
Good-looking books like that.' He picked one fresh
In virgin wrapper from deep in the box,
And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.
He read in one and I read in another,
Both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering
The small book in my pocket. It was there.
The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven
At having eased her heart of one more copy-
Legitimately. My demand upon her,
Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.
In time she would be rid of all her books.

I stay;
But it isn't as if
There wasn't always Hudson's Bay
And the fur trade,
A small skiff
And a paddle blade.

I can just see my tent pegged,
And me on the floor,
Cross-legged,
And a trapper looking in at the door
With furs to sell.

His name's Joe,
Alias John,
And between what he doesn't know
And won't tell
About where Henry Hudson's gone,
I can't say he's much help;
But we get on.

The seal yelp
On an ice cake.
It's not men by some mistake?
No,
There's not a soul
For a windbreak
Between me and the North Pole—

Except always John-Joe,
My French Indian Esquimaux,
And he's off setting traps
In one himself perhaps.

Give a headshake
Over so much bay
Thrown away
In snow and mist
That doesn't exist,

I was going to say,
For God, man, or beast's sake,
Yet does perhaps for all three.

Don't ask Joe
What it is to him.
It's sometimes dim
What it is to me,
Unless it be
It's the old captain's dark fate
Who failed to find or force a strait
In its two-thousand-mile coast;
And his crew left him where be failed,
And nothing came of all be sailed.

It's to say, 'You and I—'
To such a ghost—
You and I
Off here
With the dead race of the Great Auk!'
And, 'Better defeat almost,
If seen clear,
Than life's victories of doubt
That need endless talk-talk
To make them out.' 

I staid the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountains, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

MOTHER Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits
She could call up to pass a winter evening,
But won't, should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn't 'Button, button,
Who's got the button,' I would have them know.

SON: Mother can make a common table rear
And kick with two legs like an army mule.

MOTHER: And when I've done it, what good have I
done?
Rather than tip a table for you, let me
Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.
He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How could that be - I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious
That there's something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.

SON: You wouldn't want to tell him what we have
Up attic, mother?

MOTHER: Bones - a skeleton.

SON: But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed
Against the' attic door: the door is nailed.
It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night
Halting perplexed behind the barrier
Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get
Is back into the cellar where it came from.

MOTHER: We'll never let them, will we, son! We'll
never !

SON: It left the cellar forty years ago
And carried itself like a pile of dishes
Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,
Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,
Another from the bedroom to the attic,
Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped
it.
Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.
I was a baby: I don't know where I was.

MOTHER: The only fault my husband found with me - 
I went to sleep before I went to bed,
Especially in winter when the bed
Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.
The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs
Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,
But left an open door to cool the room off
So as to sort of turn me out of it.
I was just coming to myself enough
To wonder where the cold was coming from,
When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom
And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.
The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on
When there was water in the cellar in spring
Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or a little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile:
It wasn't anyone who could be there.
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them - and good reason.
My first impulse was to get to the knob
And hold the door. But the bones didn't try
The door; they halted helpless on the landing,
Waiting for things to happen in their favour.'
The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.
I never could have done the thing I did
If the wish hadn't been too strong in me
To see how they were mounted for this walk.
I had a vision of them put together
Not like a man, but like a chandelier.
So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.
A moment he stood balancing with emotion,
And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire
Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)
Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,
The way he did in life once; but this time
I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,
And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all directions.
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my button-box- it must be there.)
I sat up on the floor and shouted, 'Toffile,
It's coming up to you.' It had its choice
Of the door to the cellar or the hall.
It took the hall door for the novelty,
And set off briskly for so slow a thing,
Stillgoing every which way in the joints, though,
So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,
>From the slap I had just now given its hand.
I listened till it almost climbed the stairs
>From the hall to the only finished bedroom,
Before I got up to do anything;
Then ran and shouted, 'Shut the bedroom door,
Toffile, for my sake!' 'Company?' he said,
'Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed.'
So lying forward weakly on the handrail
I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light
(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own
I could see nothing. 'Toffile, I don't see it.
It's with us in the room though. It's the bones.'
'What bones?' 'The cellar bones- out of the grave.'
That made him throw his bare legs out of bed
And sit up by me and take hold of me.
I wanted to put out the light and see
If I could see it, or else mow the room,
With our arms at the level of our knees,
And bring the chalk-pile down. 'I'll tell you what-
It's looking for another door to try.
The uncommonly deep snow has made him think
Of his old song, The Wild Colonial Boy,
He always used to sing along the tote-road.
He's after an open door to get out-doors.
Let's trap him with an open door up attic.'
Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough,
Almost the moment he was given an opening,
The steps began to climb the attic stairs.
I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them.
'Quick !' I slammed to the door and held the knob.
'Toffile, get nails.' I made him nail the door shut,
And push the headboard of the bed against it.
Then we asked was there anything
Up attic that we'd ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them have it.
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,
That's what I sit up in the dark to say-
To no one any more since Toffile died.
2o3 Let them stay in the attic since they went there.
I promised Toffile to be cruel to them
For helping them be cruel once to him.

SON: We think they had a grave down in the cellar.

MOTHER: We know they had a grave down in the cellar.

SON: We never could find out whose bones they were.

MOTHER: Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.
They were a man's his father killed for me.
I mean a man he killed instead of me.
The least I could do was to help dig their grave.
We were about it one night in the cellar.
Son knows the story: but 'twas not for him
To tell the truth, suppose the time had come.
Son looks surprised to see me end a lie
We'd kept all these years between ourselves
So as to have it ready for outsiders.
But to-night I don't care enough to lie-
I don't remember why I ever cared.
Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe
Could tell you why he ever cared himself-

She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted
Among the buttons poured out in her lap.
I verified the name next morning: Toffile.
The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.

The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on a bough,
And that was all there was to see
In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill
I judged that such a crystal chill
Was only adding frost to snow
As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.

A governor it was proclaimed this time, 
When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire 
Ancestral memories might come together. 
And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow, 
A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen off, 
And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has gone. 
Someone had literally run to earth 
In an old cellar hole in a by-road 
The origin of all the family there. 
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe 
That now not all the houses left in town 
Made shift to shelter them without the help 
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard. 
They were at Bow, but that was not enough: 
Nothing would do but they must fix a day 
To stand together on the crater's verge 
That turned them on the world, and try to fathom 
The past and get some strangeness out of it. 
But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain, 
With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that misted. 
The young folk held some hope out to each other 
Till well toward noon when the storm settled down 
With a swish in the grass. 'What if the others 
Are there,' they said. 'It isn't going to rain.' 
Only one from a farm not far away 
Strolled thither, not expecting he would find 
Anyone else, but out of idleness. 
One, and one other, yes, for there were two. 
The second round the curving hillside road 
Was a girl; and she halted some way off 
To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind 
At least to pass by and see who he was, 
And perhaps hear some word about the weather. 
This was some Stark she didn't know. He nodded. 
'No fête to-day,' he said. 
'It looks that way.' 
She swept the heavens, turning on her heel. 
'I only idled down.' 
'I idled down.' 
Provision there had been for just such meeting 
Of stranger cousins, in a family tree 
Drawn on a sort of passport with the branch 
Of the one bearing it done in detail- 
Some zealous one's laborious device. 
She made a sudden movement toward her bodice, 
As one who clasps her heart. They laughed together. 
'Stark?' he inquired. 'No matter for the proof.' 
'Yes, Stark. And you?' 
'I'm Stark.' He drew his passport. 
'You know we might not be and still be cousins: 
The town is full of Chases, Lowes, and Baileys, 
All claiming some priority in Starkness. 
My mother was a Lane, yet might have married 
Anyone upon earth and still her children 
Would have been Starks, and doubtless here to-day.' 
'You riddle with your genealogy 
Like a Viola. I don't follow you.' 
'I only mean my mother was a Stark 
Several times over, and by marrying father 
No more than brought us back into the name.' 
'One ought not to be thrown into confusion 
By a plain statement of relationship, 
But I own what you say makes my head spin. 
You take my card- you seem so good at such things- 
And see if you can reckon our cousinship. 
Why not take seats here on the cellar wall 
And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?' 
'Under the shelter of the family tree.' 
'Just so- that ought to be enough protection.' 
'Not from the rain. I think it's going to rain.' 
'It's raining.' 
'No, it's misting; let's be fair. 
Does the rain seem to you to cool the eyes?' 
The situation was like this: the road 
Bowed outward on the mountain half-way up, 
And disappeared and ended not far off. 
No one went home that way. The only house 
Beyond where they were was a shattered seedpod. 
And below roared a brook hidden in trees, 
The sound of which was silence for the place. 
This he sat listening to till she gave judgment. 
'On father's side, it seems, we're- let me see- - ' 
'Don't be too technical.- You have three cards.' 
'Four cards, one yours, three mine, one for each branch 
Of the Stark family I'm a member of.' 
'D'you know a person so related to herself 
Is supposed to be mad.' 
'I may be mad.' 
'You look so, sitting out here in the rain 
Studying genealogy with me 
You never saw before. What will we come to 
With all this pride of ancestry, we Yankees? 
I think we're all mad. Tell me why we're here 
Drawn into town about this cellar hole 
Like wild geese on a lake before a storm? 
What do we see in such a hole, I wonder.' 
'The Indians had a myth of Chicamoztoc, 
Which means The Seven Caves that We Came out of. 
This is the pit from which we Starks were digged.' 
'You must be learned. That's what you see in it?' 
'And what do you see?' 
'Yes, what do I see? 
First let me look. I see raspberry vines- - ' 
'Oh, if you're going to use your eyes, just hear 
What I see. It's a little, little boy, 
As pale and dim as a match flame in the sun; 
He's groping in the cellar after jam, 
He thinks it's dark and it's flooded with daylight.' 
'He's nothing. Listen. When I lean like this 
I can make out old Grandsir Stark distinctly,- 
With his pipe in his mouth and his brown jug- 
Bless you, it isn't Grandsir Stark, it's Granny, 
But the pipe's there and smoking and the jug. 
She's after cider, the old girl, she's thirsty; 
Here's hoping she gets her drink and gets out safely.' 
'Tell me about her. Does she look like me?' 
'She should, shouldn't she, you're so many times 
Over descended from her. I believe 
She does look like you. Stay the way you are. 
The nose is just the same, and so's the chin- 
Making allowance, making due allowance.' 
'You poor, dear, great, great, great, great Granny!' 
'See that you get her greatness right. Don't stint her.' 
'Yes, it's important, though you think it isn't. 
I won't be teased. But see how wet I am.' 
'Yes, you must go; we can't stay here for ever. 
But wait until I give you a hand up. 
A bead of silver water more or less 
Strung on your hair won't hurt your summer looks. 
I wanted to try something with the noise 
That the brook raises in the empty valley. 
We have seen visions- now consult the voices. 
Something I must have learned riding in trains 
When I was young. I used the roar 
To set the voices speaking out of it, 
Speaking or singing, and the band-music playing. 
Perhaps you have the art of what I mean. 
I've never listened in among the sounds 
That a brook makes in such a wild descent. 
It ought to give a purer oracle.' 
'It's as you throw a picture on a screen: 
The meaning of it all is out of you; 
The voices give you what you wish to hear.' 
'Strangely, it's anything they wish to give.' 
'Then I don't know. It must be strange enough. 
I wonder if it's not your make-believe. 
What do you think you're like to hear to-day?' 
'From the sense of our having been together- 
But why take time for what I'm like to hear? 
I'll tell you what the voices really say. 
You will do very well right where you are 
A little longer. I mustn't feel too hurried, 
Or I can't give myself to hear the voices.' 
'Is this some trance you are withdrawing into?' 
'You must be very still; you mustn't talk.' 
'I'll hardly breathe.' 
'The voices seem to say- - ' 
'I'm waiting.' 
'Don't! The voices seem to say: 
Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid 
Of an acquaintance made adventurously.' 
'I let you say that- on consideration.' 
'I don't see very well how you can help it. 
You want the truth. I speak but by the voices. 
You see they know I haven't had your name, 
Though what a name should matter between us- - ' 
'I shall suspect- - ' 
'Be good. The voices say: 
Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber 
That you shall find lies in the cellar charred 
Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it 
For a door-sill or other corner piece 
In a new cottage on the ancient spot. 
The life is not yet all gone out of it. 
And come and make your summer dwelling here, 
And perhaps she will come, still unafraid, 
And sit before you in the open door 
With flowers in her lap until they fade, 
But not come in across the sacred sill- - ' 
'I wonder where your oracle is tending. 
You can see that there's something wrong with it, 
Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice 
Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir's 
Nor Granny's, surely. Call up one of them. 
They have best right to be heard in this place.' 
'You seem so partial to our great-grandmother 
(Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.) 
You will be likely to regard as sacred 
Anything she may say. But let me warn you, 
Folks in her day were given to plain speaking. 
You think you'd best tempt her at such a time?' 
'It rests with us always to cut her off.' 
'Well then, it's Granny speaking: 'I dunnow! 
Mebbe I'm wrong to take it as I do. 
There ain't no names quite like the old ones though, 
Nor never will be to my way of thinking. 
One mustn't bear too hard on the new comers, 
But there's a dite too many of them for comfort. 
I should feel easier if I could see 
More of the salt wherewith they're to be salted. 
Son, you do as you're told! You take the timber- 
It's as sound as the day when it was cut- 
And begin over- - ' There, she'd better stop. 
You can see what is troubling Granny, though. 
But don't you think we sometimes make too much 
Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals, 
And those will bear some keeping still about.' 
'I can see we are going to be good friends.' 
'I like your 'going to be.' You said just now 
It's going to rain.' 
'I know, and it was raining. 
I let you say all that. But I must go now.' 
'You let me say it? on consideration? 
How shall we say good-bye in such a case?' 
'How shall we?' 
'Will you leave the way to me?' 
'No, I don't trust your eyes. You've said enough. 
Now give me your hand up.- Pick me that flower.' 
'Where shall we meet again?' 
'Nowhere but here 
Once more before we meet elsewhere.' 
'In rain?' 
'It ought to be in rain. Sometime in rain. 
In rain to-morrow, shall we, if it rains? 
But if we must, in sunshine.' So she went.

Builder, in building the little house,
In every way you may please yourself;
But please please me in the kitchen chimney:
Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.

However far you must go for bricks,
Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound,
But me enough for a full-length chimney,
And build the chimney clear from the ground.

It's not that I'm greatly afraid of fire,
But I never heard of a house that throve
(And I know of one that didn't thrive)
Where the chimney started above the stove.

And I dread the ominous stain of tar
That there always is on the papered walls,
And the smell of fire drowned in rain
That there always is when the chimney's false.

A shelf's for a clock or vase or picture,
But I don't see why it should have to bear
A chimney that only would serve to remind me
Of castles I used to build in air.

I had for my winter evening walk- 
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

Inscription for a Garden Wall

Winds blow the open grassy places bleak;
But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,
They eddy over it too toppling weak
To blow the earth or anything self-clear;
Moisture and color and odor thicken here.
The hours of daylight gather atmosphere. 

To Ridgely Torrence
On Last Looking into His 'Hesperides'

I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.

I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.

I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt- 

Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth- 
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.

Was something brushed across my mind
That no one on earth will ever find?

Heaven gives it glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

I WALKED down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—
All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flower's backs.

They might be good for garden things
To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings,
And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
And since it was coming up had to come.

Over back where they speak of life as staying
('You couldn't call it living, for it ain't'),
There was an old, old house renewed with paint,
And in it a piano loudly playing.

Out in the plowed ground in the cold a digger,
Among unearthed potatoes standing still,
Was counting winter dinners, one a hill,
With half an ear to the piano's vigor.

All that piano and new paint back there,
Was it some money suddenly come into?
Or some extravagance young love had been to?
Or old love on an impulse not to care- 

Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?

It was long I lay
Awake that night
Wishing that night
Would name the hour
And tell me whether
To call it day
(Though not yet light)
And give up sleep.
The snow fell deep
With the hiss of spray;
Two winds would meet,
One down one street,
One down another,
And fight in a smother
Of dust and feather.
I could not say,
But feared the cold
Had checked the pace
Of the tower clock
By tying together
Its hands of gold
Before its face.

Then cane one knock!
A note unruffled
Of earthly weather,
Though strange and muffled.
The tower said, 'One!'
And then a steeple.
They spoke to themselves
And such few people
As winds might rouse
From sleeping warm
(But not unhouse).
They left the storm
That struck en masse
My window glass
Like a beaded fur.
In that grave One
They spoke of the sun
And moon and stars,
Saturn and Mars
And Jupiter.
Still more unfettered,
They left the named
And spoke of the lettered,
The sigmas and taus
Of constellations.
They filled their throats
With the furthest bodies
To which man sends his
Speculation,
Beyond which God is;
The cosmic motes
Of yawning lenses.
Their solemn peals
Were not their own:
They spoke for the clock
With whose vast wheels
Theirs interlock.
In that grave word
Uttered alone
The utmost star
Trembled and stirred,
Though set so far
Its whirling frenzies
Appear like standing
in one self station.
It has not ranged,
And save for the wonder 
Of once expanding
To be a nova,
It has not changed
To the eye of man
On planets over
Around and under
It in creation
Since man began
To drag down man
And nation nation.

The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.

What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
We can just see the infant up astride,
His small fist buried in the bushy hide.

There is our wildest mount- a headless horse.
But though it runs unbridled off its course,
And all our blandishments would seem defied,
We have ideas yet that we haven't tried.

I let myself in at the kitchen door.
'It's you,' she said. 'I can't get up. Forgive me 
Not answering your knock. I can no more 
Let people in than I can keep them out. 
I'm getting too old for my size, I tell them. 
My fingers are about all I've the use of 
So's to take any comfort. I can sew: 
I help out with this beadwork what I can.' 
'That's a smart pair of pumps you're beading there. 
Who are they for?' 
'You mean?- oh, for some miss. 
I can't keep track of other people's daughters. 
Lord, if I were to dream of everyone 
Whose shoes I primped to dance in!' 
'And where's John?' 
'Haven't you seen him? Strange what set you off 
To come to his house when he's gone to yours. 
You can't have passed each other. I know what: 
He must have changed his mind and gone to Garlands. 
He won't be long in that case. You can wait. 
Though what good you can be, or anyone- 
It's gone so far. You've heard? Estelle's run off.' 
'Yes, what's it all about? When did she go?' 
'Two weeks since.' 
'She's in earnest, it appears.' 
'I'm sure she won't come back. She's hiding somewhere. 
I don't know where myself. John thinks I do. 
He thinks I only have to say the word, 
And she'll come back. But, bless you, I'm her mother- 
I can't talk to her, and, Lord, if I could!' 
'It will go hard with John. What will he do? 
He can't find anyone to take her place.' 
'Oh, if you ask me that, what will he do? 
He gets some sort of bakeshop meals together, 
With me to sit and tell him everything, 
What's wanted and how much and where it is. 
But when I'm gone- of course I can't stay here: 
Estelle's to take me when she's settled down. 
He and I only hinder one another. 
I tell them they can't get me through the door, though: 
I've been built in here like a big church organ. 
We've been here fifteen years.' 
'That's a long time 
To live together and then pull apart. 
How do you see him living when you're gone? 
Two of you out will leave an empty house.' 
'I don't just see him living many years, 
Left here with nothing but the furniture. 
I hate to think of the old place when we're gone, 
With the brook going by below the yard, 
And no one here but hens blowing about. 
If he could sell the place, but then, he can't: 
No one will ever live on it again. 
It's too run down. This is the last of it. 
What I think he will do, is let things smash. 
He'll sort of swear the time away. He's awful! 
I never saw a man let family troubles 
Make so much difference in his man's affairs. 
He's just dropped everything. He's like a child. 
I blame his being brought up by his mother. 
He's got hay down that's been rained on three times. 
He hoed a little yesterday for me: 
I thought the growing things would do him good. 
Something went wrong. I saw him throw the hoe 
Sky-high with both hands. I can see it now- 
Come here- I'll show you- in that apple tree. 
That's no way for a man to do at his age: 
He's fifty-five, you know, if he's a day.' 
'Aren't you afraid of him? What's that gun for?' 
'Oh, that's been there for hawks since chicken-time. 
John Hall touch me! Not if he knows his friends. 
I'll say that for him, John's no threatener 
Like some men folk. No one's afraid of him; 
All is, he's made up his mind not to stand 
What he has got to stand.' 
'Where is Estelle? 
Couldn't one talk to her? What does she say? 
You say you don't know where she is.' 
'Nor want to! 
She thinks if it was bad to live with him, 
It must be right to leave him.' 
'Which is wrong!' 
'Yes, but he should have married her.' 
'I know.' 
'The strain's been too much for her all these years: 
I can't explain it any other way. 
It's different with a man, at least with John: 
He knows he's kinder than the run of men. 
Better than married ought to be as good 
As married- that's what he has always said. 
I know the way he's felt- but all the same!' 
'I wonder why he doesn't marry her 
And end it.' 
'Too late now: she wouldn't have him. 
He's given her time to think of something else. 
That's his mistake. The dear knows my interest 
Has been to keep the thing from breaking up. 
This is a good home: I don't ask for better. 
But when I've said, 'Why shouldn't they be married,' 
He'd say, 'Why should they?' no more words than that.' 
'And after all why should they? John's been fair 
I take it. What was his was always hers. 
There was no quarrel about property.' 
'Reason enough, there was no property. 
A friend or two as good as own the farm, 
Such as it is. It isn't worth the mortgage.' 
'I mean Estelle has always held the purse.' 
'The rights of that are harder to get at. 
I guess Estelle and I have filled the purse. 
'Twas we let him have money, not he us. 
John's a bad farmer. I'm not blaming him. 
Take it year in, year out, he doesn't make much. 
We came here for a home for me, you know, 
Estelle to do the housework for the board 
Of both of us. But look how it turns out: 
She seems to have the housework, and besides, 
Half of the outdoor work, though as for that, 
He'd say she does it more because she likes it. 
You see our pretty things are all outdoors. 
Our hens and cows and pigs are always better 
Than folks like us have any business with. 
Farmers around twice as well off as we 
Haven't as good. They don't go with the farm. 
One thing you can't help liking about John, 
He's fond of nice things- too fond, some would say. 
But Estelle don't complain: she's like him there. 
She wants our hens to be the best there are. 
You never saw this room before a show, 
Full of lank, shivery, half-drowned birds 
In separate coops, having their plumage done. 
The smell of the wet feathers in the heat! 
You spoke of John's not being safe to stay with. 
You don't know what a gentle lot we are: 
We wouldn't hurt a hen! You ought to see us 
Moving a flock of hens from place to place. 
We're not allowed to take them upside down, 
All we can hold together by the legs. 
Two at a time's the rule, one on each arm, 
No matter how far and how many times 
We have to go.' 
'You mean that's John's idea.' 
'And we live up to it; or I don't know 
What childishness he wouldn't give way to. 
He manages to keep the upper hand 
On his own farm. He's boss. But as to hens: 
We fence our flowers in and the hens range. 
Nothing's too good for them. We say it pays. 
John likes to tell the offers he has had, 
Twenty for this cock, twenty-five for that. 
He never takes the money. If they're worth 
That much to sell, they're worth as much to keep. 
Bless you, it's all expense, though. Reach me down 
The little tin box on the cupboard shelf, 
The upper shelf, the tin box. That's the one. 
I'll show you. Here you are.' 
'What's this?' 
'A bill- 
For fifty dollars for one Langshang cock- 
Receipted. And the cock is in the yard.' 
'Not in a glass case, then?' 
'He'd need a tall one: 
He can eat off a barrel from the ground. 
He's been in a glass case, as you may say, 
The Crystal Palace, London. He's imported. 
John bought him, and we paid the bill with beads- 
Wampum, I call it. Mind, we don't complain. 
But you see, don't you, we take care of him.' 
'And like it, too. It makes it all the worse.' 
'It seems as if. And that's not all: he's helpless 
In ways that I can hardly tell you of. 
Sometimes he gets possessed to keep accounts 
To see where all the money goes so fast. 
You know how men will be ridiculous. 
But it's just fun the way he gets bedeviled- 
If he's untidy now, what will he be- - ? 
'It makes it all the worse. You must be blind.' 
'Estelle's the one. You needn't talk to me.' 
'Can't you and I get to the root of it? 
What's the real trouble? What will satisfy her?' 
'It's as I say: she's turned from him, that's all.' 
'But why, when she's well off? Is it the neighbours, 
Being cut off from friends?' 
'We have our friends. 
That isn't it. Folks aren't afraid of us.' 
'She's let it worry her. You stood the strain, 
And you're her mother.' 
'But I didn't always. 
I didn't relish it along at first. 
But I got wonted to it. And besides- 
John said I was too old to have grandchildren. 
But what's the use of talking when it's done? 
She won't come back- it's worse than that- she can't.' 
'Why do you speak like that? What do you know? 
What do you mean?- she's done harm to herself?' 
'I mean she's married- married someone else.' 
'Oho, oho!' 
'You don't believe me.' 
'Yes, I do, 
Only too well. I knew there must be something! 
So that was what was back. She's bad, that's all!' 
'Bad to get married when she had the chance?' 
'Nonsense! See what's she done! But who, who- - ' 
'Who'd marry her straight out of such a mess? 
Say it right out- no matter for her mother. 
The man was found. I'd better name no names. 
John himself won't imagine who he is.' 
'Then it's all up. I think I'll get away. 
You'll be expecting John. I pity Estelle; 
I suppose she deserves some pity, too. 
You ought to have the kitchen to yourself 
To break it to him. You may have the job.' 
'You needn't think you're going to get away. 
John's almost here. I've had my eye on someone 
Coming down Ryan's Hill. I thought 'twas him. 
Here he is now. This box! Put it away. 
And this bill.' 
'What's the hurry? He'll unhitch.' 
'No, he won't, either. He'll just drop the reins 
And turn Doll out to pasture, rig and all. 
She won't get far before the wheels hang up 
On something- there's no harm. See, there he is! 
My, but he looks as if he must have heard!' 
John threw the door wide but he didn't enter.
'How are you, neighbour? Just the man I'm after. 
Isn't it Hell,' he said. 'I want to know. 
Come out here if you want to hear me talk. 
I'll talk to you, old woman, afterward. 
I've got some news that maybe isn't news. 
What are they trying to do to me, these two?' 
'Do go along with him and stop his shouting.' 
She raised her voice against the closing door:
'Who wants to hear your news, you- dreadful fool?'

A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.

It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year's berries shining scarlet red.

It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he can stretch and hold his highest feat
On some wild apple tree's young tender bark,
What well may prove the year's high girdle mark.

So near to paradise all pairing ends:
Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,
Content with bud-inspecting. They presume
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.

A feather-hammer gives a double knock.
This Eden day is done at two o'clock.
An hour of winter day might seem too short
To make it worth life's while to wake and sport.